One particular concern in all systems that dispense postage, such as a postage meter, is that an accurate accounting be made of all postage dispensed. This accounting is required by law and, typically, is accomplished by well known accounting registers within the postage dispensing system. These registers may have the form of ascending and descending registers. Typically, the ascending register is incremented by a value representative of the value of the postage dispensed while the descending register is simultaneously decremented by the total value of postage dispensed. At any given time in the operation of the system, the values of the ascending and descending registers must reflect the total amount of postage provided thereto. In order to provide an initial amount of postage funds to the system, the descending register is charged with a value amount which represents the amount of postage funds available to be dispensed, while the ascending register is set to a zero funds condition.
The evolution of mailing systems has resulted in the need for a mail management system which provides for the centralized control over one or more postage dispensing devices in such a way that the activity of the devices may be monitored and recorded by a host system. In this way, an accounting may be made of the activity of all of the postage dispensing devices which are coupled to the host. This centralized control leads to increased efficiencies and accounting reliability in the overall operation of a mailroom. As an example, in a large organization, such as a corporation, the mailroom typically performs mailing services for a variety of different clients, such as departments, within the organization. Individual clients may be the marketing department, the product department, the legal department and other diverse interorganization departments. In order that each department may be accurately charged for the services performed by the mailroom it is desirable to generate a report which allocates, for example, on a department by department basis, the postage expenditure and the value of services performed by the mailroom which are related to mailing functions.
In other organizations the mailroom may be a primary service provided by the organization, the organization typically processing and mailing material for a number of different clients. In this type of organization, it is essential that the postage dispensed and the services related to the dispensing of this postage be allocated on a client-by-client basis in order that each client may be correctly invoiced for the postage expended and the services rendered. Thus, it can be realized that in any type of organization having a mailroom that it is important that the mailroom be capable of uniquely identifying each client so that each client may be correctly invoiced. It can further be realized that it is important that certain costs associated with mailing be capable of being accurately identified in order that the postage or other charges associated with the mailpiece may be determined and accounted for. It can still further be realized that it would be beneficial to provide a user of a mail management system the ability to define a number of mailing transaction related parameters that the user wishes to record and to subsequently report, such as parameters related to operator and machine efficiencies and/or parameters related to total postage charges for a given account.